Dear Editor,
I read Jeff Brumley’s article on the Trump administration’s decision to cease consideration of gender-based violence in immigration and was struck by the administration’s blatant inconsistency.
In January, President Trump signed Executive Order 14168, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” Its stated purpose was to “defend women’s rights … by using clear and accurate language and policies that recognize women are biologically female.”
These policies include the definition of sex as “an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female” and “women” as adult human females. In addition, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development was instructed to draft “a policy protecting women seeking single-sex rape shelters.”
In light of these statements, I find it ironic that the Department of Justice now declares that sex, or sex and nationality, are insufficient to define a particular social group. “Women,” apparently, is too broad a category to warrant protection.
As noted in Jeff’s article, this decision ignores longstanding precedent that gender should be considered a distinct basis for oppression. Instead, the DOJ posits “that certain characteristics may make individuals more vulnerable to violence does not establish that individuals sharing that characteristic necessarily constitute a cognizable particular social group.”
You can’t have it both ways, Mr. President. On the one hand, you seek to narrow the definition of “women” and ensure “single-sex” rape shelters are an option when they face violence in this country. On the other, your administration denies asylum to foreign women escaping gender-based violence and trafficking. I conclude that you only care about defending women’s rights when it is ideologically convenient.
Grace Cappella, Middletown, Ohio